Mongolia is one among a small handful of places left in the world with major untouched mineral deposits. But investing successfully in its mining industry demands more than just money and a willingness to take risks; it requires understanding the country's vulnerable geography and byzantine political environment.

Mongolia enjoys one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. But the dramatic increases in the country's GDP are riddled with ambiguity, as widespread corruption and an unsustainable dependence on mining raise questions for the future. Absent better planning and more government regulation, Mongolia's problems will only worsen.

In November 1920, after Bolshevik armies had smashed White Russian forces in eastern Siberia, three young Mongolians went to Moscow to ask help against the recently reimposed Chinese control of Outer Mongolia. Vladimir I. Lenin received them. He advised them that the Soviets would help establish a separate state of Mongolia and it should be a Marxist one. "With the aid of the proletariat of advanced countries," Lenin had recently told the Comintern and paraphrased to his visitors, "backward countries may make the transition to the Soviet system and ... to Communism, bypassing the capitalist stage of development."